Album Review: The Big Revival - Kenny Chesney

Artist: Kenny Chesney
Release Date: September 2014
Label: Blue Chair/Columbia Nashville
Producer: Buddy Cannon & Kenny Chesney

Kitch's Rating: 10/10

Last year, Kenny Chesney made a decision. More often than not, the superstar of country music tours during the middle of summer, playing to millions of fans in NFL stadiums across America, but he decided to not tour in 2014 (aside from one show to farewell George Strait in Dallas) in favour of spending a longer time in the studio, creating a better album.

That’s not to say that his 2013 release Life on a Rock is a bad album, because it isn’t. It reached #1 on both the US Country Album charts and the all-genre Billboard 200 and spawned two Top-25 singles. I suppose that could be considered a failure compared to 2012’s Welcome to the Fishbowl and all of his albums in the ultra-successful decade between 2002 and 2012, which delivered multiple number one singles.

So Chesney decided to spend more time looking at his studio work rather than touring, and it’s paid off handsomely for the Tennessean native. The Big Revival is at once something completely new for Chesney and also reminiscent of his most successful albums – he had six in the 2000’s, all of which went #1. 

Teamed with long-time producer, Buddy Cannon, Chesney, who co-produces his seventeenth studio album, has called upon some of the very best songwriters Nashville has to offer – Rodney Clawson, Luke Laird, Shane McAnally and David Lee Murphy amongst them – and the end result is an astoundingly exciting eleven-track album in which every song seems better than the one before.

The Big Revival ticks all the boxes. It’s got all the makings of a monster hit for Chesney, and I’m struggling to find fault with it. The mark of a good album, for mine, is going through without skipping a track, and I didn’t skip one here. I loved every cut on The Big Revival, from the anthemic foot-stomping, drum-heavy title track, to the stuck-in-your-head catchy chart-topping lead single ‘American Kids’ or the surprisingly effective duet with Vermont rocker Grace Potter on ‘Wild Child’ – not the combination you’d expect, right? – through to the raucous celebration of that so-called Redneck Riviera on ‘Flora-Bama’. 

Casting aside his the island-type music that was front and centre on Life on a Rock, The Big Revival is country-rock at it’s finest. There’s no real sign of the ‘bro country’ pioneered by Florida Georgia Line and others, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some great celebrations of drinking, Saturday nights and long weekends. They were Chesney’s domain well before Florida Georgia Line and others came along.

The positivity and energy of every track is fantastic. The album, which seems set to spawn a bunch of very successful singles, grips you right from the outset, holds you and doesn’t let go until the final note on the final track has faded to nothingness. Where Chesney’s recent work has been more laid back and relaxed, this is urgent, drum- and guitar-driven music, and it’s great. His signature voice is as good as ever.

I don’t often give albums a perfect score, but The Big Revival thoroughly deserves it.